The use of conveyor belts in connection with handling and processing of food products is widely known and may involve feed faces whose longitudinal directions may be oriented horizontally or in various inclinations transversely and longitudinally thereof.
For example, the Danish application 0447/76 concerns an apparatus for treating fish and comprises a plurality of conveyor belts having substantially horizontally oriented conveying surfaces. This system advances and positions fish along a horizontal path while the fish are subjected to i.a. cleaning. Thus, the supporting face does not change its nature during the processing of the fish.
Known is also a fish feeding system where the fish are gripped and retained by holding means which engage the gill openings of the fish and thereby retain and position the fish in a subsequent cleaning operation.
The above-mentioned plants have preferably been used in connection with cleaning fish of guts, etc., but conveyor belts are also known which support fish horizontally for feeding at a station where decided boning of fish takes place.
In the past, fish have thus been disposed on a horizontal supporting face for providing the said operations, but the invention is based on the finding that significant operational advantages will be obtained if the fish can be held in a vertical position via the tail, which makes complete cleaning of the fish possible, where not only guts, but also bones and other matter can advantageously be removed, especially because of an increasing automatization in this field too.